Figure-ground diagram
Encyclopedia
A figure-ground diagram is a two-dimensional map of an urban space that shows the relationship between built and unbuilt space. It is used in analysis of urban design
and planning
. It is akin to but not the same as a Nolli map which denotes public space both within and outside buildings and also akin to a block pattern diagram that records public and private property as simple rectangular blocks. The earliest advocates of its use were Colin Rowe
and Fred Koetter.
As well as "fabrics", a figure ground diagram comprises entities called pochés. These are, in simple terms, groups of structures — or in even simpler terms the black figures on the diagram. A poché helps to define the voids between the buildings, and to emphasize their existence as defined objects in their own rights: spaces that are as much a part of the design as the buildings whose exteriors define them. Frederick Gibberd
was a proponent of the reverse figure-ground diagram, where the buildings are in white and the spaces black, to focus the perception of the designer upon the space as an object. This treatment of the space is a predominant factor in figure ground theory, which holds that in urban contexts that mostly comprise vertical structures such as apartment blocks and skyscraper
s, the most often neglected feature of the design is the ground plan, which figure-ground studies bring to the fore by emphasizing a two-dimensional representation that structures space.
The figure-ground theory of urban design and urban morphology
is based upon the use of figure ground studies. It relates the amount of "figure" to the amount of "ground" in a figure-ground diagram, and approaches urban design as a manipulation of that relationship, as well as being a manipulation of the geometric shapes within the diagram. A figure-ground illustrates a mass-to-void relationship, and analysis of it identifies a "fabric" of urban structures. Other related theories of urban design employ different approaches. Linkage theory operates upon linkages between elements of an urban space, and manipulates those. Place theory operates upon structured systems of human needs and usage.
The morphology of the modern city has undergone considerable changes during the past century as manipulations of the figure ground have revealed new fabric types. Dense cities became diffuse as the car began to dictate the city fabric, greatly augmenting the space allotted for roads and parking spaces. This shift is represented in the fragmentation of the figure ground’s formerly dense poche, or the black figures in the diagram representative of built structure . During the twenty-first century this increasingly fragmented urban condition has proven problematic and is being addressed by the New Urbanism movement’s promotion of infill construction, returning cities to a denser poche .
, Le Corbusier
, and Walter Gropius
wished to build new and rid culture of “dead forms” . Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine pour trois million habitants
in 1922 featured high-density living concentrated in towers, maximizing open space and fresh air. The proposed city created a field of figural objects based on Le Corbusier’s ‘tower in the park,’ a theory that would pervade architectural theory through the mid-century Urban Renewal .
During the 1950s and early 1960s, architects did not follow a unified style, but they did share a blind confidence in modern architecture’s capacity to improve the public realm. Such general optimism encouraged planning bureaucracies to employ a tabula rasa in modern cities that called for clearing areas of high urban density, often deemed slums, to make room for large-scale urban gestures . This method of large-scale bulldozing, seen in Pruitt-Igoe
and Boston City Hall Plaza
, traded a finely grained urban fabric (a primarily black figure ground) for large figural objects in an open field condition (a primarily white figure ground).
By the late 1960s and 1970s, architects began to criticize the void condition of the figure ground created by urban renewal for “disregarding human needs, for not blending in, for lacking signs of identity and association, and for being an instrument of class oppression” . Many architects theorized about how to remedy modern architecture’s fixation on the object in the urban environment.
In 1961, Gordon Cullen
began the Townscape movement with his well-known book The Concise Townscape, which suggested architecture emphasize the relationship between urban elements– buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements, etc. by designing cities at a whole to create an ever-changing urban environment for the pedestrian . Cullen termed this theory “serial vision” and would require that the figure ground depict a continuous building poche that defined varying manipulated voids.
In 1978, Colin Rowe
's Collage City, a highly influential text for architects and urban planners, claimed urban renewal’s city of jumbled disparate objects was just as problematic as the city it set out to remedy - the dense traditional city of slums . During the urban renewal architects and planners believed that a building could only be understood as an object when in field space, but Rowe disagreed, arguing that the increasing value of urban real estate in the modern city did not allow for the ample green space required to support Le Corbusier's “towers in the park.” Rather, this residual space is paved for parking lots that detach buildings from the rest of the city fabric . Hence, Rowe called for a transcendence of space fixation and object fixation to create an urban environment where building and space achieve balance and a figure ground with shared dialogue between solid and void .
In 1993, Rem Koolhaas
calls for interconnections amongst built architecture, requiring a more continuous poche in the figure ground, in his recognized book S, M, L, XL. Koolhaas explained that architects’ fixation on the objectivity of a building, disregarding its coherence with the urban context . has led to the “death of urbanism” , for if architects are so seduced by the conceptual clarity of one building that they forget urbanism, cities become conglomerates of objects with no relation to one another.
movement encourages densifying metropolises rather than building on their peripheries, thus, promoting infill and reclamation of abandoned areas , which will increase the amount of poche in the figure ground to achieve a more continuous urban fabric. Such density will foster more livable communities with increased diversity of use and population, better pedestrian accommodations, more public spaces, and improved public transportation systems .
Urban design
Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...
and planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
. It is akin to but not the same as a Nolli map which denotes public space both within and outside buildings and also akin to a block pattern diagram that records public and private property as simple rectangular blocks. The earliest advocates of its use were Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe , was a British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician, and teacher; acknowledged as a major intellectual influence on world architecture and urbanism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, particularly in the fields of city planning,...
and Fred Koetter.
As well as "fabrics", a figure ground diagram comprises entities called pochés. These are, in simple terms, groups of structures — or in even simpler terms the black figures on the diagram. A poché helps to define the voids between the buildings, and to emphasize their existence as defined objects in their own rights: spaces that are as much a part of the design as the buildings whose exteriors define them. Frederick Gibberd
Frederick Gibberd
Sir Frederick Ernest Gibberd was an English architect and landscape designer.Gibberd was born in Coventry, the eldest of the five children of a local tailor, and was educated at the city's King Henry VIII School...
was a proponent of the reverse figure-ground diagram, where the buildings are in white and the spaces black, to focus the perception of the designer upon the space as an object. This treatment of the space is a predominant factor in figure ground theory, which holds that in urban contexts that mostly comprise vertical structures such as apartment blocks and skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
s, the most often neglected feature of the design is the ground plan, which figure-ground studies bring to the fore by emphasizing a two-dimensional representation that structures space.
The figure-ground theory of urban design and urban morphology
Urban morphology
Urban morphology is the study of the form of human settlements and the process of their formation and transformation. The study seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of a metropolitan area, city, town or village by examining the patterns of its component parts and the process of...
is based upon the use of figure ground studies. It relates the amount of "figure" to the amount of "ground" in a figure-ground diagram, and approaches urban design as a manipulation of that relationship, as well as being a manipulation of the geometric shapes within the diagram. A figure-ground illustrates a mass-to-void relationship, and analysis of it identifies a "fabric" of urban structures. Other related theories of urban design employ different approaches. Linkage theory operates upon linkages between elements of an urban space, and manipulates those. Place theory operates upon structured systems of human needs and usage.
Debate over usage
The figure ground plan organizes the primary urban landscape components - plots, streets, constructed spaces, and open spaces – into a diagram of solid and void; the proportions, of which, can be manipulated to create different urban morphologies. If building mass (solid poche) is greater than open space (void), spatial continuity is achieved through street walls and articulated public spaces, creating a mixed-use urban environment that fosters pedestrian activity. If open space is greater than building mass, buildings become disconnected, and voids lack spatial definition, often becoming surface parkingThe morphology of the modern city has undergone considerable changes during the past century as manipulations of the figure ground have revealed new fabric types. Dense cities became diffuse as the car began to dictate the city fabric, greatly augmenting the space allotted for roads and parking spaces. This shift is represented in the fragmentation of the figure ground’s formerly dense poche, or the black figures in the diagram representative of built structure . During the twenty-first century this increasingly fragmented urban condition has proven problematic and is being addressed by the New Urbanism movement’s promotion of infill construction, returning cities to a denser poche .
History
Beginning in 1920s, urbanists such as Tony GarnierTony Garnier (architect)
Tony Garnier was a noted architect and city planner. He was most active in his hometown of Lyon.Garnier is considered the forerunner of 20th century French architects...
, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, and Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
wished to build new and rid culture of “dead forms” . Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine pour trois million habitants
Ville Contemporaine
The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealised project to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922....
in 1922 featured high-density living concentrated in towers, maximizing open space and fresh air. The proposed city created a field of figural objects based on Le Corbusier’s ‘tower in the park,’ a theory that would pervade architectural theory through the mid-century Urban Renewal .
During the 1950s and early 1960s, architects did not follow a unified style, but they did share a blind confidence in modern architecture’s capacity to improve the public realm. Such general optimism encouraged planning bureaucracies to employ a tabula rasa in modern cities that called for clearing areas of high urban density, often deemed slums, to make room for large-scale urban gestures . This method of large-scale bulldozing, seen in Pruitt-Igoe
Pruitt-Igoe
Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956; by the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation...
and Boston City Hall Plaza
City Hall Plaza (Boston)
City Hall Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts, is a large, open, unadorned public space in the Government Center area of the city. The architectural firm Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles designed the plaza in 1962 to accompany Boston's new City Hall. The multi-level, irregularly-shaped plaza consists of red...
, traded a finely grained urban fabric (a primarily black figure ground) for large figural objects in an open field condition (a primarily white figure ground).
By the late 1960s and 1970s, architects began to criticize the void condition of the figure ground created by urban renewal for “disregarding human needs, for not blending in, for lacking signs of identity and association, and for being an instrument of class oppression” . Many architects theorized about how to remedy modern architecture’s fixation on the object in the urban environment.
In 1961, Gordon Cullen
Gordon Cullen
Thomas Gordon Cullen was an influential English architect and urban designer who was a key motivator in the Townscape movement. He is best known for the book The Concise Townscape, first published in 1961.-Biography:Cullen was born in Calverley, Pudsey, near Leeds...
began the Townscape movement with his well-known book The Concise Townscape, which suggested architecture emphasize the relationship between urban elements– buildings, trees, nature, water, traffic, advertisements, etc. by designing cities at a whole to create an ever-changing urban environment for the pedestrian . Cullen termed this theory “serial vision” and would require that the figure ground depict a continuous building poche that defined varying manipulated voids.
In 1978, Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe
Colin Rowe , was a British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician, and teacher; acknowledged as a major intellectual influence on world architecture and urbanism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, particularly in the fields of city planning,...
's Collage City, a highly influential text for architects and urban planners, claimed urban renewal’s city of jumbled disparate objects was just as problematic as the city it set out to remedy - the dense traditional city of slums . During the urban renewal architects and planners believed that a building could only be understood as an object when in field space, but Rowe disagreed, arguing that the increasing value of urban real estate in the modern city did not allow for the ample green space required to support Le Corbusier's “towers in the park.” Rather, this residual space is paved for parking lots that detach buildings from the rest of the city fabric . Hence, Rowe called for a transcendence of space fixation and object fixation to create an urban environment where building and space achieve balance and a figure ground with shared dialogue between solid and void .
In 1993, Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
calls for interconnections amongst built architecture, requiring a more continuous poche in the figure ground, in his recognized book S, M, L, XL. Koolhaas explained that architects’ fixation on the objectivity of a building, disregarding its coherence with the urban context . has led to the “death of urbanism” , for if architects are so seduced by the conceptual clarity of one building that they forget urbanism, cities become conglomerates of objects with no relation to one another.
Current Initiatives
The current decade’s New UrbanismNew urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...
movement encourages densifying metropolises rather than building on their peripheries, thus, promoting infill and reclamation of abandoned areas , which will increase the amount of poche in the figure ground to achieve a more continuous urban fabric. Such density will foster more livable communities with increased diversity of use and population, better pedestrian accommodations, more public spaces, and improved public transportation systems .